“Would your arm?”
“And so they’ll die?”
“Yes.”
Garth slipped away, and after a time Thel saw an orange light like a sort of firefly bobbing through the trees: Garth, holding a branch tipped by a glowing ember. Thel joined him, and they crept to the back of the treefolk’s cage, and Garth held the tip of the branch to the lashings at the bottom of one pole. As they blew on the coal the treefolk inside watched, without a sound or any sign of interest. Garth begged those inside to emerge, and got no reply.
Thel stared at the orange ember which brightened as they blew on it, embarrassed for Garth, and worried about what he could do alone. When the cage lashing caught fire with a miniature explosion of white flame, Garth looked at his comrades through the smoke and said fiercely, “You know what the spine kings have done to you! You know what they’ll do to you next! Come out and exact some revenge, meet your end like trees should. While you do we can rescue a friend who yet lives, and you’ll either make a quick end to it, or escape to be free on the great spine when your time comes.” He jerked hard on the pole and it came loose. “Come on, get out there among them and remember the part of you they threw on their fires.”
One of them started forward and crawled under the lifted pole, and the rest looked at each other, at the raw stumps protruding from their shoulders; they too slipped from the cage. In a moment they had all disappeared into the dark.
“It would be better if we had something else for the other cage,” Garth said to Thel. “The ember is dying.”
“There are a lot more in the fire.”
“My kin’s lives.”
“They can free these others.”
Garth nodded. “We burn hot. But one of those swords they carry would be helpful.” And he disappeared again.
Thel waited, as near the swimmer’s cage as he could get without emerging into the light. From the hut beside the bonfire and the central cage came the sounds of laughter, then those of an argument turning ugly. Around him in the forest were odd noises, sudden silences, and he imagined the treeless treefolk wandering murderously in the dark, jumping drunken guards as they stumbled off to piss in the trees, bludgeoning them and then stealing their swords to slip between the ribs of others. The spine kings feared no one and now they would pay, ambushed in their own village in the midst of their death bacchanal. Sick with images of brutal murder, keyed to the highest pitch of tension, Thel leaped to his feet involuntarily as a crash and cries came from the direction of the beach, and the guards in the clearing’s hut rushed out and down a path. “The platform!” someone was shouting in the distance as Thel ran to the bonfire and snatched up a brand. Sparks streamed in a wide arc from the burning end as he ran to the cage and crushed the burning end of the branch against the lashings at the bottom of a pole. This cage was better constructed and it was going to take longer. A twig cracked behind him and the swimmer croaked a warning; he swung the brand around and caught an onrushing guard in the face. The guard’s raised broadsword flew into the cage, cutting one prisoner who cried out; the guard himself couldn’t do more than grunt, as Thel beat him furiously across the neck and head. When Thel turned back to the cage the prisoners had cut the lashing with the sword and were squeezing out of the cage and cursing one another under their breath. Thel took the swimmer woman by the arm and pulled her out; she was thicker than the others and barely fit through the gap. She appeared dazed, but when Thel held her face in his hands and caught her eye, she recognized him. Garth had reappeared, and Thel was about to lead the swimmer out of the clearing when one of the other prisoners said urgently, “Wonderful saviours, thank you eternally, please, follow me, I know where the trailhead is that leads up to the spine!” So they followed him, but it seemed to Thel he went straight for the center of the camp.
Shrieks cut the night and torches had been tossed high into the trees, some of which had caught fire and become great torches themselves, so that there was far too much light for their purpose. “Wait one moment please,” the prisoner who claimed to know the way said, and he ran into the largest house in the camp.
Apparently some of the treefolk amputees had found the flex X and set it alight. The crater wall enclosing the lagoon appeared out of the darkness, faintly illuminated by the burning village. Sparks wafted among the stars, it seemed the cosmos was winking out fire by fire. The prisoner ran out of the house carrying a sack. “Follow me now,” he cried jubilantly, “and run for your lives!”
They ran after him. Thel took the swimmer by the arm, determined not to lose her in the mayhem. But now the prisoner was true to his word, and he led them through firebroken shadows to a wide cobbled trail, ignoring the shouts and cries around them. The trail ran up to the crater’s rim and then along it, to the point where the crater wall diverged from the great slope of the spine ridge. The trail began to switchback up the slope. Looking across an arc of the lagoon they saw the village dotted with burning trees and smaller patches of fire, the flex X burning high on a beach glossy as a seal’s back, and there were two images of everything: one burning whitely over the beach, another, inverted, burning a clear yellow in the calm black water of the bay.
8. The Mirror
Afraid of the spine kings’ pursuit, they ran the trail west for many days, scarcely pausing to loot caches located by the prisoner who led them. The caches contained clothing and shoes, and also buried jugs of dried meat and fruit, lumps so hard and dry they couldn’t tell what anything was until chewing it; good food, but because there were seven of them they were still hungry. “We’ll come to my village soon,” the prisoner said one evening after doling out a meager dinner, and outfitting Thel and the swimmer in pants and tunics, and boots that were a lucky fit. The prisoner’s name was Tinou, and he had a wonderful big smile; he seemed astonished and delighted to have escaped the spine kings, and often he thanked Thel and Garth for their rescue. “When we get there we’ll eat like the lords of the ocean deep.”
The sun had set an hour before, and a line of clouds over the western horizon was the pink of azaleas, set in a sky the color of lapis. The seven sat around a small fire:
Thel, the swimmer, Garth, Tinou, and three women.
These women all had faces cast in the same mold, and a strange mold it was; where their right eye should have been the skin bulged out into another, smaller face, lively and animated, with features that did not look like the larger one around it—except for the fact that its own little right eye was again replaced by a face, a very little face—which had an even tinier face where its right eye should have been, and so on and so on, down in a short curve to the limit of visibility, and no doubt beyond.
This oddity made the three women’s faces impressive and even frightening, and because the three full-sized faces seldom spoke, Thel always felt that when talking to them he was really conversing with one of the smaller faces—perhaps the very smallest, beyond the limit of visibility—which might reply in a tiny high squeak at any time.
But now the three women stood before Tinou, and one said, “We want to know what you took from Kataptron Cove.”
“I took this bag,” Tinou said, “and it’s mine.”
“It is all of ours,” the middle woman said, her voice heavy and slow. Her companions moved to Tinou’s sides. “Show us what it is.”
In the dusk it was hard to tell if expressions or firelight were flickering across Tinou’s long and mobile face. Thel and the swimmer leaned forward together to see better this small confrontation, and Tinou flashed them his friendly smile. “I suppose there is justice in that,” he said, and picked up his shoulder bag. Untying the drawstring he said, “Here,” and slipped something out of the bag, a small shiny plate of some sort.